The Strength of Your Mettle

Recently, I was featured in The Ankler and on the heels of that article I was interviewed by Larry Mantle on AirTalk. Both of these focused on something that's been heavy on a lot of people's minds, especially those of us in Southern California. The contraction of the entertainment industry and what happens to the people left in its wake.

I didn't expect what happened next.

Larry opened the phones. And one by one, people called in with their own versions of the story. Former industry people who had found new roads. People who had taken the thing they were most proud of in themselves, not the most practical thing, not the safest thing, but definitely the truest thing, and built something from it. Careers. Lives. Identities that belonged to them in a way a job title never quite does.

I sat there listening (and cheering them on) and thought: this is what humans do. This is actually what we do.

No Industry Is Bigger Than a Person

Industries are invented things. They rise and contract and disappear and reinvent themselves on their own timeline, indifferent to the people inside them. The entertainment industry didn't set out to hurt anyone. It just changed, the way all invented things eventually change.

But a person is real. And that distinction, between the invented thing and the real thing, is everything. Because it means you get to decide how much the invented thing affects you. Not whether it affects you. But how much. And in what direction.

The people who called in had made that decision. Consciously or not, they had looked at what the industry had taken and asked: what does it leave? And the answer, for every one of them, was: me.

Humans Adapt. We Always Have.

We have been adapting and evolving far longer than any industry has existed. Longer than any economy, any institution, any structure humans have built. It's actually the abilities to pivot, to learn, to find new ways through that gave birth to industry in the first place.

When I left television, I didn't leave empty-handed. I left with every conversation I'd ever had, every problem I'd ever solved, every room I'd ever read and every story I'd ever told. I brought all of that into the workshop. And I genuinely believe that I have more layers because of the different careers I've experienced. Each one taught me something the others couldn't. Each one added a dimension.

That's not loss. That's compound interest on a life fully lived.

The Quest Is the Thing

What moved me most about those callers wasn't where they had landed. It was the quest they described to get there. The willingness to lean into the part of themselves they were proudest of. It wasn't the part the market told them was valuable, but the part that felt most like them and to follow it somewhere new. 

That takes courage. Real courage. And it deserves real pride.

If you're in the middle of that quest right now, if the industry you built your identity around has shifted beneath your feet and you're trying to find solid ground, I want to say this plainly: you are not what you did. You are what you're made of. And what you're made of doesn't disappear when a job does.

Find the truest part of yourself. Lean into it. Build from there.

The rest will follow.

Mine brought me here to a workshop, to a place where my hands shape natural materials, to making things that are real and are built to last. Things I can hand to you and say: I made this. With everything I've lived.

That's what mettle makes.